NEW YORK - March 1, 2010 -CRM magazine, the leading publication in the customer relationship management industry, announced the winners of its 2010 CRM Service Awards here today, in conjunction with the magazine's March 2010 issue.

Recognizing how the economic climate helped drive service as a significant differentiator, CRM magazine's seventh annual CRM Service Awards honor the vendors, consultants, and end-user companies focused on high-quality customer experiences through the sophisticated integration of people, processes, and technologies.

Maintaining the eight-category breadth of last year's awards, CRM nevertheless expanded the scope of the 2010 Service Leader Awards to include more companies. In each category, the magazine has again named a single Service Winner, denoting the year's highest score relative to a peer group. Each category now also identifies three Service Leaders and at least one vendor deemed "One to Watch."

LiveOps, a provider of outsourcing and workforce management solutions for work-at-home contact center agents; and

Nexidia, one of the few companies making speech analytics relevant to the contact center.

Last, but certainly not least, the magazine named five customer implementations as winners of its CRM Service Elite Award -- again, a record number:

online retailer Drugstore.com, which took a dose of RightNow Technologies to get better at making its customers look good;

network-solutions provider Enterasys Networks, which turned to Salesforce.com to create relationships as well as efficiencies;

Infusionsoft, a provider of email marketing software for small businesses, which used an online environment designed by Helpstream to enable customers to provide their own community-based support;

insurance giant New York Life, which used a Verint Systems deployment to give its contact center agents something to stick around for; and

Southwest Airlines, which, thanks to Virtual Hold Technology, now offers passengers the choice to hang on or hang up.

"CRM magazine is pleased to see the steadfast devotion to service excellence demonstrated by the companies and individuals in the 2010 CRM Service Awards," said David Myron, the magazine's editorial director. "These award recipients are proving that organizations can streamline business processes, maximize profitability, and improve customer service interactions."

CRM magazine is the leading publication of the customer relationship management industry, covering sales, marketing, customer service, and strategy. The magazine also administers and hosts the annual CRM Evolution conference. Each of these properties is designed to serve customer-centric business initiatives, and leaders who recognize CRM as a key strategy for creating enhanced customer value in any industry. For more information about the magazine, its editorial calendar, or CRM in general, please visit us on the Web at http://www.destinationCRM.com; at our blog, http://www.destinationCRMblog.com; or on Twitter at @CRM (http://twitter.com/CRM) and @destinationCRM (http://twitter.com/destinationCRM). The destinationCRM Web site (which is updated daily) and the monthly magazine are properties of CRM Media, a division of Information Today, Inc.